


This Cold-Hearted Boy I Used To Be

by ToodleOfDeeth



Category: History Boys (2006), History Boys - All Media Types, History Boys - Bennett
Genre: Coming Out, Coming of Age, Denial of Feelings, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Future Fic, M/M, Swearing, somewhat slow burning? idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 21:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6583777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToodleOfDeeth/pseuds/ToodleOfDeeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He, in the darkest corner of the pub, hands wrapped around a pen and a pint, listened to Dakin moan about the next essay, the next woman, the next step. Then there was a stutter, a stop, and he looked up at Dakin who gazed back with a calculating expression. Then there was a smirk, and Scripps felt his blood run cold. He knew that face."</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Cold-Hearted Boy I Used To Be

Really, anything could be considered sinful. Some people saw drugs, money, and power as a sinful pleasure; something the everyday man could rarely get his paws on. But it all depended on the perspective it was coming from. To the poor man, sin was bread, to the rich man, sin was women, to the poor woman, sin was alcohol, and to the rich women, sin was true love.

 

Dakin once said something that sparked a chain reaction, unsurprising due to him being the turning point for almost all the group’s actions. He kept things interesting, falling in love with a teacher, kissing the secretary, and threatening the Headmaster. It just seemed it was how he was, a living oxymoron of sorts (being a lady-killer and the innocent schoolboy. Being the confident one who moaned his woes to Scripps like he was some sort of therapist. He isn't). He was the one who threw a spanner into the works but instead of hitting one machine he hit three.

 

He, in the darkest corner of the pub, hands wrapped around a pen and a pint, listened to Dakin moan about the next essay, the next woman, the next step. Then there was a stutter, a stop, and he looked up at Dakin who gazed back with a calculating expression. Then there was a smirk, and Scripps felt his blood run cold. He knew that face.

 

Then Dakin opened his mouth, showing off the tips of his teeth from behind his lips, as he asked, “ Seen Posner recently?”

 

It was innocent enough. Scripps shuffled the pages of his journal, and capped his old fountain pen again. No, he had not seen Posner that day; he’d seen him the day before. “Yesterday,” he drawled, and then asked, “Why?”

 

Dakin put down his glass and onto the table and leaned forwards slightly. Scripps imagined the Cheshire cat in Dakin, and although he wasn't Alice, he still felt tense. Something spring to mind, a quote his mother read to him as a kid. He squashed it as Dakin said in the same nonchalant tone, “Akhtar told me that Posner told him something. About you. He said dear ol’ Pos had a bit of a secret. Do you know about this?”

 

“No,” Scripps took another sip of his pint. “I don't,” and he drained the last dregs from the glass. He was confident that Dakin would tell him, as he’d taken the same risk before. Say as little as you can and act uninterested, then they’ll tell you more to get you listen. They both knew the tricks, but it was so rare for someone like Dakin to recognise them in others, despite using them as often as Scripps did.

 

He took the bait, and after a few seconds, Dakin huffed and said, “Well, he does. Don't bother asking Pos about it though; Akhtar said he had to pry for the most of an hour before he knew it had to do with you, let alone the rest. He didn't tell me any more, “ _“The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in,”_ I guess.”

 

Again, another pause. Scripps poked the condensation on his glass, before offering to get the next round. After a smile and a nod, Scripps wandered to the bar and forgot about the conversation.

 

\--

 

Scripps was getting better at holding his drink, the thought. He woke up less with a headache on Sundays, and he managed to have a pint or two of bitter before collapsing on whomever he was with. He supposed though, that it was better to only drink one day of the week rather than all of them, even if he was better at holding it. _“Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the Bible says love your enemy.”_

 

He thinks he’ll never find a quote to describe it better.

 

Oxford, for all it’s worth, just seemed like another Uni, but with better buildings and higher standards. People were different too, but the Sheffield boys all stayed the same. They were still rowdy, still mocking and loud, with forked tongues and sharp smiles and rough fingers from writing too much.

 

But Scripps wasn't concentrating on how he was the only somewhat sober one; he was concentrating on stopping Posner from falling off of him and onto the floor. He thinks it might be nice to let him go, just to stop his arms going dead, but he still clings him to his chest. It’s like Scripps is holding a teddy bear that’s too big for him, like Posner is deliberately leaning on him just so that Scripps might be able to understand what he’s murmuring. Dakin sits across from them, laughing with a long breath, and Rudge is dead to the world.

 

Pos put his head on Scripps’ shoulder, and every time he mumbles something his chin pokes into his jumper. Scripps focuses on keeping them off the floor instead of the warm breaths rolling over his neck and the goose bumps on his arms. Dakin stops to lean forwards and clutch his stomach, like he laughed too hard or his appendix feels like blowing up, and Scripps is really glad they gravitated towards Dakin’s dorm instead of his.

 

Posner begins to sing slightly, and Scripps collapses against the loveseat to hold him from dropping onto Rudge. He barely understands what Posner sings, but recognised some of the lines from the Radio in the dining hall. Pos smells like old smoke and wood polish.

 

“ _Caroline talks to you softly sometimes_

_She says, "I love you" and "Too much"_

 

He sings another line, one Scripps doesn't recognise, and then a drawn out, but still mangled, note. Then Posner pauses, watching Dakin with a vacant expression, and sings the chorus with a renewed enthusiasm. If Scripps really cared he could’ve put the notes in along with it, but there was no point if no one else could hear it.

 

“ _Pretty in pink, isn't she?_

 _Pretty in pink, isn't she?_ ”

 

Dakin nods along, or to sleep, and Pos readjusts himself so that all of himself is lying on top of Scripps on the seat, with Scripps flat below him. Scripps doesn't mind.

 

(Scripps doesn't really pay attention to what Pos sings. He hears bits of lyrics he doesn't recognise all the time.

 

_...I hear the sound of rain falling in my ears_

_Washing away the weariness like tears._

_I can feel my troubles running down,_

_Disappear into the silent sound…_

 

Or

 

. _..Through the storm we reach the shore_

_You give it all but I want more_

_And I'm waiting for you…_

 

But he still memorises them and waits for Pos to sing them again. He never looks them up, or asks for the song title, for he fears once he understands what Posner is singing the magic of it all will be lost to them both.)

 

\--

 

Posner still finds ways to make Scripps either wonder what the hell he’s doing, or to make him wonder why the hell he’s still chasing after god. Whenever Pos even mentions something about one of the other boys, he listens without intending to. It happens with everything he says.

 

“I think Jimmy’s found a girl,” He says, and Scripps turns to look.

 

“How do you spell ‘Humanitarian’ again?” And Scripps is already reaching for the dictionary.

 

“It’s really unfair how the Choir meets up during my second lesson, but _C’est la vie._ I can't change it,” and Scripps tells him to sing anyway.

 

\--

 

Posner knows before Scripps does.

 

There’s the look out of the corner of his eyes before he realises he does it. There are the secret smiles. There’s the clutching the book to his chest and sliding down the locker, holding his head in his hands because he wonders how on earth he’s going to survive another Tuesday of their study sessions.

 

Yes, Posner knows Scripps is hopelessly in love with him.

 

Honestly… he likes the feeling of denying him. He likes resting his hand on Scripps’ neck just to his breath stutter, or to brush shoulders with him when they walked to the same lesson in the morning. On one fateful evening he even went so far as to lean his head on Scripps, and although Scripps hadn't pushed him away, he’d tensed. Posner counted it as a win.

 

It’s the same thing Dakin had done to him, and now it was his turn to be on the winning side.

 

It’s rather nice.

 

\--

 

It’s like an itch he can't scratch. Some days it’s barely noticeable - A slight tickle over the back of his neck, and other days the itch rolled up and down his body, and every time he scratched it, it moved. Sometimes he lies awake at night, staring at the ceiling, feeling himself scratching as he rolls around in his sheets like a man possessed.

 

He knew that this wasn't the regular sort of itch. Not something cured by creams or pills or diet changes. This itch was an unrelenting sort of itch that could only be scratched by those with the right hands. He realised this somewhere in the midst of Oxfords, punting, and the high summer grass stretching over the banks of the river, that this itch was not meant to be scratched by his hands. In fact, this wasn't even a physical sort of itch. From that point on his life became a whole lot more complex than it needed to be.

 

\--

 

One day, he lets it go.

 

Like a piece of silk slipping from his hands when finally submerged in water, his religious beliefs, works, hymns and ideology slowly floats down to the bottom of the pool, never to be touched again. He can still see the shimmer of green where the cloth sits, among mud and broken promises. He knows that if he really, _really_ , wanted to, he could roll up his sleeves and fish it out of the water.

 

But he doesn't.

 

Occasionally, he returns. To look. To think. Occasionally he dips his fingers into the pool, just enough to feel the freezing, controlled waters, and to wonder if it’s really worth it. More often than not, it isn't. Sometimes it is. But the cloth stays there; each time he returns the green seems to fade. Like it’s going out of fashion.

 

One day he lets it go. Another day he doesn't come back.

 

\--

 

Scripps doesn't know who he is anymore. Some days he’s still Scripps; a somewhat shy boy turned man who reads and writes and contemplates human existence. And some days he’s Dakin (He moans, he talks, he smiles, and he wakes up hot and sweaty and sinful), and some days he’s Posner (He metaphorically whines, he metaphorically swoons, he literally writes pages upon pages about the eyes of someone he never names).

 

Sometimes, when he’s in his room, reading, writing, listening to music, he becomes someone he’s never met.

 

“I like to think of it as the new me. I just wished I liked who they were. They still read and write and listen to music, but in the silence of the night I can hear them breathing. It’s the same as mine, layered over the top, exactly the same but so different at the same time. Maybe it’s been layered wrong, their stuttering inhales being slightly before or after mine. And their exhale being louder and louder as time goes by.” He writes in his journal, and then scribbles it out.

 

“I am still me, but in the same way a monkey evolved into a human, I am evolving into something other than what I once was.”

 

He gives up after that statement.

 

\--

 

He puts no thought into what happens next, and doesn't intend to keep it that way.

 

The pink jumper he’s wearing his Aunt May had gotten him for his birthday that September, and so it was safe to say that it was newer than his others, but also safe to say she’d bought it with her husband’s money. It was a tight stitch, with a different knit at the hems. It’s soft, but not the intended colour. When she ordered it from a magazine, it said blue. They gave him pink, and from that point his family cursed the Spanish magazines that Aunt May read.

 

For what it’s worth, Scripps didn't really care. He could take the laughs from the others, the look Dakin gave him when he wore it, and the smiles Emily from the back of his class gave him.

 

However, he did care about the pointed look Pos gave him whenever he wore it. He did care about how Pos said it complemented his freckles, and how Pos wondered about how soft it was.

 

Once, after walking home with Pos swinging off of his arm, he shut the door to his room and looked at himself in the mirror.

 

To his horror, dread, and absolute misfortune, his cheeks match his jumper. He knows exactly why. And he thinks, _yeah,_ and goes to phone Dakin.

 

“ _So you're telling me the realisation that you weren’t into this religious bollocks was about three months ago, and now you realise that not only are you gay, that you are also gay for Posner.”_

 

“I think so, yes.”

 

“ _And you want my advice?”_

 

“I- yeah.”

 

 _“Scripps, if you know me you already know what I’m going to say. One, You’re an idiot. And two, just fucking tell him. Or make it more obvious. It’s like pulling a plaster,”_ And then he leaves Scripps to succumb to the ever-creeping darkness of his room.

 

\--

 

One fortnight, three days and it’s suddenly Saturday. Far from drunk, Scripps lies on the couch, and Posner rolls his shoulders from where he’s standing in front of the bookshelf. It was winter, a cold and bitter one, and although there was heating within the walls of their college, it was nowhere near good enough to keep the chills of the nights and days at bay. There was still no snow.

 

“Pos,” he croaks, and Pos turns to look at him with the same face he had in Sheffield. He tilts his head, and indication for Scripps to keep going, and although Scripps wants to look at that face forever, he breaks the silence.

 

“I think I’m gay,” and that is _not_ what he wanted to say.

 

There’s a pause, with Posner’s eyes turning wider and wider, and Scripps wants to bury himself in the blanket he’d draped over himself.

 

“You- What?”

 

“I, um,” Scripps stops again. This wasn't his plan, and every journal entry, every poem and every conversation couldn't help him now.

 

“I’m gay. I think,” he repeats.

 

Now this silence, unlike all the others Scripps had experienced, was very loud indeed. He couldn't help but read into how Pos’ hand twitched slightly, and how he was leaning back slightly, and how Scripps wanted the floor to turn to fire and for him to just _combust_ to get out of this situation. No quote, snippet or gobbet could advise him now.

 

“Pos?” He squeaked, and then Posner snapped back to reality.

 

He moved, jauntily, like a robot turning on for its first test run, over towards Scripps slightly, but stopped before he reached the halfway point. He cleared his throat, and said, almost a whisper, “Are-” then he paused, ashamed at the volume of his voice, and started again.

 

“Are you okay with it, though? You don't seem comfortable with the confession…” he trails off.

 

Scripps reached to scratch the back of his neck, a nervous habit he’d picked up in school a long while ago. He doesn't realise Posner recognises it, but does notice how his eyes flick to it, and then back to his face. A blush, hot, red, bleeds across his face, making him look like he’s either run a marathon or spread a jar of raspberry jam across his face.

 

His hand moves to grip the hair at the back of his head, and as he looks upwards at the ceiling, he states, almost unsurely, “I think I knew for a long while, but just haven't said anything,” and somehow in his mind that statement has made it all worse.

 

If Pos had known about this revelation before Scripps mentioned it, he didn't show it in his face. He hums slightly, and sits on the bed, before asking, “What are you going to do about it now?”

 

Scripps made a noise in the back of his throat, half frustrated groan and half ‘I-don't-know’.

 

The game, Pos realises, is too cruel to continue with. He’s seen how Scripps moves, wanders. He’s seen how Scripps blushes and stammers and wrings his hands in his lap while they talk at the coffee shop, and yet while it lights him up inside, he realises it’s sadistic. It shouldn’t continue, for in the same way that it is wrong to pull the wings off flies, it is wrong to pull the heartstrings of someone who has never loved before.

 

So he gets off the bed, and Scripps is too busy stumbling over his self-explanations, he doesn't notice. Pos takes one step, two steps, before nudging Scripps’ legs so that they lay flat. He looks at Scripps’ face, his terrified, soft face, and sits on his lap, grips his hands in Scripps’ pretty pink jumper, and kisses him stupid.

 

\--

 

The itch he had is gone, and the cloth is buried in muck. He no longer visits the pond, but still occasionally pauses to think, to wonder, and then to be pulled back to reality by Good Ol’ Pos’ lips pressed into his forehead. He thinks to himself now, as the journals fade like his youth, and his hair becomes grey. He never thinks of the other lives he could have lived, or the other people he was.

 

He used to be Scripps; soft, malleable, freckled and tiptoeing. Now He is Scripps; Soft in the gut, defined in his actions, freckled over every inch of skin and married To Posner with three cats and a mortgage.

 

Only now, does he realise just how in love he truly is.

 

He decides he doesn’t mind.

 

  


 

**Author's Note:**

> Title, All These Things I've Done by The Killers. 
> 
> “The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in” -- Henry Green 
> 
> “Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.” -- Frank Sinatra 
> 
> First song, Pretty in Pink by Psychedelic Furs
> 
> Second song, Sun and The Rain by Madness, 
> 
> Third song, With or Without You by U2
> 
> Please, if you see something wrong with the piece, let me know! I love to hear feedback, even if it isn't completely positive!
> 
> This is my first work for the History Boys, and I have to say, i seriously hope you all enjoyed it because I will most likely (probably) be posting another one soon!


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